Mystical secrets of Karelian petroglyphs - the coded history of Russia

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

“Petroglyphs in Karelia are covered with mystical secrets in a dense veil. To know these secrets means to know not only our past, but also our future. Yuri BOGATYREV, historian, archaeologist.

The mythology of the peoples of the world is nothing more than instructive tales for children and adults, as most scientists are still convinced. And only in Russia ancient legends from time immemorial were called epics, the overwhelming majority of which were recorded in the nineteenth century in Karelia - a truly legendary and magical land.

We would like to talk about this with the well-known researcher of Karelia, the author of books from the series "Mysterious Karelia", co-chairman of the Karelian Regional Public Organization "Race" (www.rassa.ru) Alexei Popov.

D. Sokolov:Alexey, now, I think, it is worth talking about the main symbols of the sacred history of Karelia. For a person who first came to the republic, they will involuntarily become the famous petroglyphs - scenes from the life of an unknown ancient people, carved in the form of drawings on the rocks. Tell us, what, in your opinion, is the age of these "stone books"?

A. Popov:Indeed, petroglyphs, like the famous Kizhi or Valaam, are considered one of the most famous tourist brands in Karelia, especially since the discovery of new rock carvings continues to this day. Moreover, the latest discoveries of previously unknown petroglyphs were made quite recently - in 2005 by a joint expedition of Karelian and British archaeologists on the Vyg River and in 2008 on the coast of Lake Onega. The very same tradition of rock art in Karelia spans thousands of years - from the end of the fifth to the beginning of the third millennium BC, in other words, the age of engravings is not less than six thousand years. Perhaps even more, given current radiocarbon date corrections. It turns out that they were created before the construction of the famous Egyptian pyramids and the most ancient civilizations of Sumer and Akkad. But we will return to the question of dating the Karelian petroglyphs later.

D. Sokolov:But who created these drawings, if, as you say, they are older than the most ancient civilizations on Earth? Today, at least approximately, is the civilization that left us these "stone letters" known?

A. Popov:Petroglyphs shed light on the life and knowledge of pracivilization, which was once located in the Russian North. To speak about the authors of the messages, one can only analyze and decipher the petroglyphs themselves, which, unfortunately, has not yet been done by modern science.

Of all the known Karelian petroglyphs - as a rule, they are small in size, 10-50 centimeters, although there are also large, one might say, “giant” specimens - the researchers managed to interpret no more than half. Moreover, scientists do not have any questions when they see figures of swans, fish, forest animals and their hunters on the stone. Difficulties arise when vague images, strange figures that do not even remotely resemble well-known objects appear in front of the observer. For example, the signs attributed by researchers to the solar-lunar type, which are oriented only to the west or east. According to some, they mean the Moon or the Sun, but then it is not clear why they seem to be installed on two or three "legs". Some researchers are sure that ancient people saw some flying objects and depicted something related to them. Indeed, these objects are more like radars than a star. And people who still live near these places are not at all surprised by such images. They, in their own words, observe the appearance of similar "drawings" in the sky almost every night. Nobody knows what it is!

There is a lot of incomprehensible in the images of human figures. People are usually engraved in profile, with one arm and one leg, and only rarely in full or half face. However, they still look like people. But what can mean a two-legged creature, which has two huge balls instead of a head? They have been fighting over the solution for more than a dozen years, but no one has come close to the truth. Most of all, of course, the creature seems, sorry, to Cheburashka, but, unfortunately, modern science is not satisfied with this interpretation, since any drawing, no doubt, carries a strictly definite semantic load.

D. Sokolov:Maybe the mysterious creatures depicted on the stones and vaguely resembling people are a banal product of the imagination of ancient people?

A. Popov: I don’t think it was too time-consuming for the ancient people to create these drawings, it is unlikely that they would simply depict their fantasies. I do not exclude that before us are real characters of the past centuries. But who exactly is a mystery! Most likely, no one will ever be able to answer this question, because rock paintings are not just pictures from nature, but the real world, reworked by human consciousness, associated with a cult, a system of beliefs and rituals, and the attitude of people in general.

D. Sokolov: As far as we know today, petroglyphs often depict not just drawings of individual creatures or hunting scenes, but also, one might say, whole stone canvases of the life of the civilization that created them. What are the most common motives?

A. Popov: You will be surprised, but the ancient civilization, like us, was very concerned about the demographic issue. But seriously, in fact, the abundance of drawings with pronounced erotic motives is striking. Although these motives are a ubiquitous plot found in the Old and New Worlds. But they can hardly be interpreted only from the point of view of “everyday sexual experience”. Living a single life with cosmic forces, our distant ancestors saw precisely in the cosmic-heavenly forces the primary source of sexual energy - male and female. According to Christian canons, sexual love has always been considered something sinful, requiring cleansing. But in the folk traditions, despite the persecution from the church, the pagan belief in secret, mainly heavenly forces remained ineradicable, which, in their opinion, conditioned the whole gamut of love feelings, controlling them both in a positive and negative direction. This "loving union with nature", permeating all spheres of life, and was the basis of the understanding of the world in times distant from us.

D. Sokolov: Today, researchers are increasingly interested in the search for sacred and legendary places, carried out by the names of the surrounding toponyms. So, for example, several years ago, researchers who were looking for the famous "Vilyui iron boilers" in the Yakut taiga, were surprised to find that one of the rivers flowing in those places, translated into Russian, is called "The Drowned Cauldron". Have you tried to trace the history of the people who created the petroglyphs by the names of rivers, tracts, hills?

A. Popov: Of course, in our studies we could not get around this method, and it justified itself, but there are more interesting results. Recently, the so-called Andoma Upland, located in the north of the East European Plain and which is the watershed of the lakes of Onega, Lacha and the White Sea, has been of great interest to researchers of the ancient history of our region. The Russian researcher M. Karchevsky gives, in this connection, very interesting data. Here, on an area of only a few square kilometers, the Soida River, the northernmost source of the Volga, originates from underground springs. Literally nearby, the Tikhmanga River begins, flowing into Lake Lacha, from where the Onega River flows out, carrying its waters to the White Sea. There is also a small forest lake, from which one stream carries water to the White Sea basin, and the other to the Caspian Sea. In some places, the distance between the initial riverbeds of the three seas does not exceed 100-200 m. It would seem that there is nothing surprising here? But there are no more than one and a half dozen similar places on the globe, where the watersheds of the three seas converge. There are two of them in Europe - the second in Turkey; there are also two in Russia - the second in Siberia. But this is not even unique. In all other cases, rivers flow into adjacent seas, which are usually part of the same ocean. And only here - on the Great Andome watershed - do rivers flowing in opposite directions, into the seas of various oceans, thousands of kilometers from each other, begin.

About fifty kilometers northwest of the confluence point of the watersheds of the three seas, on the eastern shore of Lake Onega, is the famous Besov nose. This is one of the southern outcrops to the day surface of the rocks of the Baltic Crystalline Shield. Here, on the granite surface polished by glaciers and surf waves of Lake Onega, there are about 1000 petroglyphs - rock paintings, the age of which is estimated at 6-7 thousand years.

Among the Onega petroglyphs there are those that are of interest to us at the moment. In Yu. Savvateev's book "The Stone Chronicle of Karelia" the accompanying text to these images reads: "… several strange individual figures: a man with a" branch "on his head and the upper body of a three-fingered humanoid figure … A man in high boots with legs apart and outstretched arms with circles (rings); and, finally, the image of a man's leg."

D. Sokolov: Indeed, strange figures. But have they still not received any intelligible explanation?

A. Popov: As far as I know, no. But the hypothesis of M. Karchevsky could, if not decipher, then come close to solving this puzzle. If we take a topographic map of the place where the watersheds of the three seas converge, then all these figures will turn out to be … images of the upper reaches of the Soida River and its many tributaries. Incomprehensible circles-rings are lakes, from where two streams flow out, which, merging, form a "human figure" - I will come down. "Branch" on the head - two streams falling into the lake. The image of the "human leg" is a segment that really resembles the "leg" of a river valley. Perhaps this is one of the world's first topographic maps. And the drawing of the tributaries that form the Soida River is a symbol of the ancient Aryans - a symbol of the beginning and cycle of life, a swastika. It is a pity that it is defamed by the Nazis, who appropriated it as an emblem. But in ancient times, this symbol carried an extremely positive beginning.

D. Sokolov: More than interesting. But honestly, is there anything strange and mysterious surrounding these rock paintings?

A. Popov: I will not dissemble. The complexes of petroglyphs are truly mystical. But the most mysterious of the petroglyphs is unanimously recognized as the figure of the "Demon", a more than two-meter humanoid creature with disproportionately small legs and outstretched toes, which has been controversial among scientists for more than one year. Located among the images of "otter", "catfish" and many smaller animals, also carved on the rock, it may well turn out to be the "master of the underworld", the god or demon worshiped by the ancient peoples. Some researchers think so.

But the "Demons nose" itself is constantly surrounded by mystical stories; it must be admitted. So in 2002, the annually updated list of the World Monuments Fund, which includes one hundred monuments of world importance that are subject to destruction, the petroglyphs of Karelia are entered at number 78. Getting into this list actually meant the allocation of a solid grant for the support or restoration of certain historical monuments. Somewhat earlier, when the preliminary work on the preparation of the corresponding financial documents for Karelian antiquities was already in full swing, on September 11, 2001, the director of the public organization "Petroglyphs of Karelia" Nadezhda Lobanova received a call from the USA from the representative of the financial organization responsible for submitting the application. On his way to the New York office, he suddenly felt unwell and decided to return home for medication. When, after some time, he drove up to the south tower of the World Trade Center, where his office was located, he saw a terrible picture. Before his eyes, the Boeing rammed the building.

The destroyed documents were later restored, but what happened only added mysticism to the Karelian petroglyphs, which they are already surrounded by. It turns out that, figuratively speaking, the "demon figure" literally saved his financial benefactor.

However, the cape itself, where the “figure of the Bes” is located, fully justifies its name. In a kilometer radius from it, satellite navigation often refuses to work, which has long been no surprise to the captains of ships entering here, focusing exclusively on the lighthouse installed here. The clock behaves unpredictably here. They can run forward, they can stop. What is the reason for such an anomaly, scientists do not yet know for sure. They say that supposedly the whole thing could be in granites saturated with magnetic ore, which lie deep here underground. To the locals, of course, the version with granites seems far-fetched. They believe otherwise; all the oddities from the "Demon".

D. Sokolov: Yes, an amazing place, but bioenergetics, tried to explore the cape with the "Demon figure"?

A. Popov: Yes, such studies, of course, have been carried out. Modern dowsers with the help of the frame determined that there are energetically active zones on this territory, oddly enough, having a beneficial effect on the human body. Perhaps that is why the ancient people, who had not yet moved away from nature, being its integral part and therefore sensitive to such places, chose them to equip their sanctuaries. At first, short-lived drawings appeared on the stones, made, for example, with coal or blood, but the elements quickly erased them. Therefore, the ancient artists began to make their creations imperishable, knocking out familiar images on the stones. Animals, people and mysterious fantastic creatures depicted on the pages of the "stone book" became immortal, and numerous generations could communicate with them, ask for a successful hunt or healing from diseases. Usually such communication began in the spring, when the snow melted, and ended with the first powder, in order to resume the next year. In addition, rituals related to hunting, initiation of young men into men, sacrifices to the spirits of their ancestors were held here.

D. Sokolov: If we follow simple human logic, then, having discovered sacred monuments in Karelia, would it not be logical to decipher the Karelian petroglyphs with the help of the Finno-Ugric languages and mythology?

A. Popov: Attempts to "read" petroglyphs using the material of Finno-Ugric mythology have been used more than once. But all such attempts were unsuccessful. In order for the images to at least slightly coincide with the Finnish legend, they constantly had to stretch, adjust the meaning of the legends to the cave paintings, and interpret the drawings deliberately falsely so that their meaning would at least partially resemble the mythology used for reading. The most productive method turned out to be the use of not Scandinavian, but Indo-European mythology, first of all, Russian, as a key to reading the Karelian petroglyphs, namely, the plots of the spiritual Verse about the Pigeon Book.

D. Sokolov: Good! But why is it not even mentioned about such significant events in the most ancient Karelian-Finnish epic “Kalevala” that has absorbed the “wisdom of those epochs”?

A. Popov: Everyone has heard about the Karelian-Finnish epic "Kalevala". However, there are still disputes - what does the name of the epic mean? The traditional excuse that this "word denotes a mythical country (the country of Kaleva) where the hero's descendants live" has already "set the teeth on edge." In the Karelian and Finnish languages, Kalevala cannot be deciphered in any way … However, the answer lies literally “on the surface”. It lies in the basis of the ancient Aryan, Sanskrit roots and testifies to the most ancient single proto-language associated with the northern "Hyperborean civilization": Kali - "Time", "circulation"; Val - "The Supreme God", "Creator". Kalevala - "The Circulation of God, the Universe"?

In general, every page of the epic is saturated with magic and incantations, which means the entire everyday life of the ancient Karelians, and an impartial analysis of the text gives the impression that such distant times are reflected in the Kalevala:

- when the climate in these northern places was warmer;

- when there was an obvious matriarchy - everywhere the mother was at the head of the clan, all the supreme gods were goddesses: the Mother of Air Ilmatar, and the Mother of Water Vellamo, and the Mistress of the World of the Dead Mana - “giving birth to all people” (again, in a new incarnation ?!) (compare: among the Egyptians Menes, among the Indo-Aryans Manu, among the Greeks Minos are the most ancient kings of people).

The history of the creation and death of Sampo is the main event of the epic. Although it is said that she, this magic mill would have flour one side, and the other would grind salt, the third side - a lot of money …

- this is clearly a later image of her, greatly belittled and distorted. After all, Sampo is not just a "cornucopia", even if prosperity reigns in the country where it is installed. No, there is some lost ancient symbol …

2010-28-02

Interviewed by Dmitry Sokolov (Moscow)